I have to tell you she was an inspiration to me, and I never even met her. Some years back, I clipped a picture of her snapped by one of your staff photographers, Lea Suzuki. The image is of her sitting in an oak tree. That day, she, all of 91, and her buddies Shirley Dean, 71, and Betty Olds, 86, (former Berkeley city officials), were trying to save the beloved oak grove adjacent to Cal's Memorial Stadium from being torn down to make way for a new athletic training center.

I didn't necessarily support that cause, but seeing that image of a little old lady making her voice heard inspired me to stand up for my own beliefs and to do what I can to make this world a better place.

Thank you, Sylvia.

Gina Jausoro, San Francisco

Democratic voter betrayed

I'm 63 years old and have voted in every presidential election since I became eligible. I have always voted for the Democratic candidate. Next year, for the first time, I will not do so. (Nor will I vote Republican, for that matter.) Barack Obama has broken faith with Democrats by continuing the war in Iraq, signing on to an extension of the Bush tax cuts, backing down over the debt-ceiling crisis, and now by breaking his promise not to go after pot clubs.

As an attorney, I've had a number of clients over the years who depend upon medical marijuana for relief from chronic pain. By closing the clubs, Obama is making it much harder for these patients to obtain pain relief.

This is the final straw. I don't care if Rick Perry becomes president, I will not vote for Obama.

Stop 'stop-and-frisk' tactic

Franklin Zimring ("Memo to Oakland, Richmond," Oct. 30) gives a great deal of credit for New York's lowered crime rate to the increasing aggressiveness of police but acknowledges that "we don't know whether large numbers of misdemeanor arrests and massive stop-and-frisk campaigns" help.

But we do know that the more than 600,000 warrantless stops made in New York City last year make thousands of people - primarily black and Hispanic youth - feel unsafe. Princeton Professor Cornel West and others were willing to risk arrest this month in a protest against these tactics. Racially biased stop-and-frisk campaigns that violate basic civil rights are not going to make Oakland and Richmond safer.

Picking on public workers

Once again, public employees are attacked as David Crane ("Boomers hijack their kids' futures," Insight, Oct. 30) makes an argument that public employees are bankrupting the next generation.

What critics of public employee benefits fail to recognize is that these employees are often the first generation in their families to obtain an education and a decent job or the first to obtain a well-paying blue-collar job that in the past women and people of color were excluded from. They are part of the 99 percent. Fighting for the maintenance of decent public jobs is a way of fighting for the future of the next generation of workers.